January 2012

Review Of Peer-To-Peer Lending Site – Prosper

Prosper is a Peer to Peer lending website similar to Lending Club that connects individuals who want to lend money to others who are looking to borrow money. It is appealing to both borrowers and lenders because it offers great rates for borrowers and great returns for investors. As an investor, Prosper allows you to skip the bank and deal directly with borrowers putting more money in your pocket. And, as a borrower, you can typically save several percentage points on your loan than what you would have received otherwise from a traditional lender. Investing With Prosper Prosper allows you to invest an amount of money, with which you can loan out to other individuals. The minimum amount to loan … Read more

Rigged Money by Lee Munson – Book Review

by Hank Coleman

I was recently given the opportunity to review the book “Rigged Money: Beating Wall Street At Its Own Game” by Lee Munson. As you can probably tell by the book’s title, Lee Munson makes his case that the stock market is a rigged game set up for institutional investors and the fat cats on Wall Street. Lee Munson asserts that Wall Street is rigged to ensure that individual investors on Main Street are kept in the dark to continue to feed the system. Rigged Money includes a great combination of anecdotes and raw financial data to back up Lee Munson’s claims. Rigged Money by Lee Munson Rigged Money is a book that tries to convince you that almost everything that … Read more

Review Of TradeKing Discount Stock Brokerage

by Hank Coleman

Are you looking for a discount brokerage to help you begin buying, selling, and trading individual stocks and options? TradeKing may be the website that you are looking for. They offer an easy to use website, excellent resources for education, and one of the lowest commissions on the internet for stock and options trades. TradeKing Has Very Low Commissions TradeKing is an online stock and options broker that is known for having very low commissions. It highlights fair and simple pricing: just $4.95 for stock trades, and $4.95 + 65 cents per contract for options trades. If you trade more than 8 options contracts, the per contract price drops to 15 cents. And, if you do multi-leg option-only trades, there … Read more

The Benefits Of Using A Mortgage Calculator

by Guest Contributor

If you are considering getting a home loan, it is essential that you do your research and fully understand what you are getting in order to find the best mortgages and interest rate for you and your family. For many types of home loans, you can research great mortgages ahead of time by using a mortgage calculator to figure out your major costs and expenses.

How to Use a Mortgage Calculator

When you are using a mortgage calculator, you need a couple of basic pieces of information: the mortgage amount, the mortgage term (usually 15 or 30 years, but could vary), and the interest rate. With these key pieces of information, you can get an estimate of what your monthly payment would be, and it will usually include your payoff date as well.

Other Things to Look For

There are some good things to look for in a mortgage calculator. One of the primary uses is to compare what different scenarios will do to your monthly payment. For example, you could change the term from 30 years to 20 years, or 15 years

Why A Big Tax Return May Not Be So Bad

by Hank Coleman

I constantly fuss at my wife because she wants to have a fairly large ($3,000+) income tax return every year. Knowingly receiving a big tax refund each year is a big mistake that many workers make. I try to tell her that we are simply giving the federal government an interest free loan by doing that, but she simply doesn’t listen.

It is always a constant struggle to get my wife involved in financial planning for our family. She simply isn’t interested in money and finances and leaves that portion of our lives squarely on my shoulders for the most part. So, I got to thinking. Does it matter if we get a big tax return at the end of the year? Maybe it doesn’t matter after all.

A Big Tax Return Is Forced Savings

Like paying off a mortgage, overpaying the government in taxes every month is a way to force you into a type of savings plan.

How I Recently Invested in a Rock Band with Kickstarter

by Hank Coleman

I’m always on the lookout for great alternative investment ideas to beat the stock market with about 10% of my investment portfolio. That is one of the reasons that I invest in Lending Club, precious metals, and a few other alternative investments. I’ve even looked to invest in a rock band. It is a great way to spice up my investing, goose my rate of returns a little, and have a little fun too. Investing should be fun! That’s what keeps us engaged and motivates us to continue saving and investing for our other financial goals such as early retirement, sending our children to college, and others. It is no secret that I am trying to learn how to play … Read more